Pavlov’s Right-Wing Dogs and the Conditioned Response to Smart, Strong Women in Politics

Pavlov’s Right-Wing Dogs and the
Conditioned Response to Smart, Strong Women in Politics

Read
a news headline about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the first-term Congresswomen
from New York’s 14th District, and watch the right-wing bots and humans
salivate their maliciousness like Pavlov’s dogs on hearing a bell. By way of
background, the dogs used in Pavlov’s experiments were conditioned to respond
to a bell in anticipation of a food reward, stimulating the flow of the dogs’
saliva.

The
young Congresswoman has already built herself a reputation for speaking her mind
and standing up for her constituents regardless of political hierarchy. All of
the qualities that Republican voting males said they loved in Trump are shown
with more class and intelligence in Ocasio-Cortez, but she draws a very
different response from that group. Words like “c—, piece of a–, ignorant
sl–” and a myriad of other derogatory and demeaning terms drop from the mouths
of Trump-nation men like saliva. On the rare occasion when one of them attempts
to make an argument rather than just spew hatred, the tired phrase of
“socialist” springs out as if it conveyed the ultimate evil even though many of
these same men had no problem with Senator Bernie Sanders avowed socialism in
his presidential campaign. The fact Ocasio-Cortez is intelligent, a savvy
rhetorician beyond her years, and attractive makes her all the greater target
for men who seem angry at their prospects related to relationships with women.

Ocasio-Cortez
is not alone, however, in this Pavlovian response to the mention of her name. Perhaps
no one woman in the country elicits more of this disgusting, conditioned
response than former New York State Senator, First Lady, former Secretary of
State, and former presidential candidate than Hillary Rodham Clinton. She is
not only incredible smart, she is powerful, wealthy, and actually won the last
race for President of the United States if we count the popular vote. The mere
mention of Clinton’s name takes less time than Pavlov’s bell to witness the
slobbering hatred drip, drip, drip from the mouths of right-wing men.

Nancy
Pelosi, the 55th Speaker of the House and the only woman to hold
that high office, not once but twice, also draws a conditioned response from
the right. As one newspaper is quoted, “Nancy Pelosi has earned undying hatred
from the right,” the response focuses on the word “earned” as if the Pavlovian
response had a logic outside of conditioning.

Read
the “conservative” responses to any mention of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth
Warren, who just declared her presidential candidacy for the 2020, or
California Senator Kamala Harris, and the saliva of hate, sexism, and
denigration flows from the right-wing like a river of mucus.

Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, also
draws conditioned vitriol from the right-wing. Her sharp, intellectually
precise dissents to right-wing court decisions have earned her nasty names from
the right-wingers. Liberals, however, have embraced this Justice and turned the
negative name given to her by right-wing pundits into a badge of honor: “a
left-wing jurist who has notoriously ruled for abortion and against the
consciences of employers” into a badge of honor, citing the “Notorious RBG”
with love and respect.

The
irony of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s national identity as a Russian is not lost in
this time of Russian/Putin-love by right-wingers. The next time you see any of
these powerful women leaders in the news, check out the Pavlovian responses
that follow.